Life: It's a Risky Business

"The comfort zone is a behavioral state within which 

a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, 

using a limited set of behaviors to deliver

a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk. 

A person's personality can be described 

by his or her comfort zones. 

Highly successful persons may routinely step outside

their comfort zones, to accomplish what they wish. 

A comfort zone is a type of mental conditioning 

that causes a person to create and operate mental boundaries. 

Such boundaries create an unfounded sense of security. 

~Wikipedia

Safety. Security.
Two words that have nothing to do with feelings.
Two words that take a lot of effort to maintain without a lot of reward for the effort.
Two states of being that are impossible to guarantee.
Ask the person struck by lightning, the one dying of cancer or anyone who drives a vehicle, rides a bike, or walks out their front door on any given day.

We like the feeling of being safe even if that belief is in fact....a myth.
We like feeling comfortable in our straw houses with the blinds drawn against the dangerous unknown.
If all your time is spent maintaining your sense of safety and security, when do you live?

I am here to tell you that from conception on, your life is at risk. 
Living is a risky business.

How much effort and emotion are you putting into maintaining your comfort zones?

We have more than our physical life to lose and that can be gone in a heartbeat.
It is all we know, this breathing and thinking and walking.
We deny the unique value of our life when we give into fear. 
This intrinsic value is what is lost when we live within our carefully constructed comfort zones. 
A light has no value under a bowl. It is still a light but it has no purpose or influence and gives no joy, no direction, no comfort.
The truth is, we lose more joy and more vitality and more peace trying to stay safe and unruffled and "anxiety neutral" than we gain by fortifying our sense of security.


Life is precarious at best. We live on a knifes edge, all of us! Faculties and simple life functions operate independent of our deepest wishes. We walk the planet, with billions of other souls making their own choices, choices that will have some impact on someone somewhere: No permission asked.


It's a risky business Life.

So what do you take comfort in?

How then do you live?

I am middle aged. I am not sure how I got here but it's official.
I am spending quite a bit of time lately examining things. Examining the fabric of my life, chasing down threads of choices and beliefs about my choices. It has become a very cathartic exercise.
I am finding that the tighter my grip the less free I become.
I don't want my life to be driven by fear. I refuse to live in a prison of my own design.

We change the world by being in it.

We change deep within by embracing the risky business of living...with joy!
Life is a lavish gift, a generous offering: not something to be hoarded as minutes and seconds of breathing. That's not living!!!!
Life is meant to be offered, shared, expressed in a technicolor display of personality and love and grace and beauty.


Are you hoarding your minutes? 
Your minutes and seconds count, this is your life!
Has fear immobilized you?
Stare it down and embrace the risky business of living!


Step out of your comfort zones, bottom line: THEY LIE.


The world changes the minute we do.

What have you got to lose?